Districtwide, sixth graders have been taking part in a new writing initiative with SUNY Cortland.
The program, organized by Director of Curriculum and Instruction Kim LaRegina and led by district Literacy Coach Dina Maiella-Marro, is a partnership between the schools and Cortland’s literacy department. Each sixth grade student has been paired with a graduate student at Cortland who will serve as their mentor for the duration of the nine-week program. The students will be submitting five writing samples to their mentor. The mentor will then provide feedback – in both written and video forms – on various elements of writing, such as organization, flow of ideas, voice, use of details and sentence fluency. The students and mentors are utilizing Google Classroom to submit their writing assignments, view the feedback and ask questions.
The writing pieces can be anything from a paragraph, poem, reading response or reflection, a math reflection or an essay; the classroom teachers will be determining the writing assignments.
The program kicked off with each student being assigned their mentor and reading their introductions. The students then submitted a written piece back introducing themselves as well.
“This writing program is meant to help train teachers who are literacy specialist candidates at SUNY Cortland, as well as to nurture young writers with meaningful feedback,” Mrs. Maiella-Marro said. “The mentors are all certified teachers or eligible to be certified.”
